Dick Hardly
Professor Dick Hardly (voiced by Jeff Bennett) was Professor Utonium's old college roommate who leeched off of him instead of studying. It's revealed in flashbacks that Professor Dick is also a womanizer. He appears to be around the same age as the Professor. His only appearance was in the episode "Knock It Off", where he was amazed over the girls' powers. He wanted to make a profit off of them, but the Professor angrily refused and kicked him out. As a result, Hardly comes up with a wicked plan: if he couldn't have the girls themselves, he would make his own and make billions. While picking them up from Pokey Oaks, he asks the girls how to create his own little girls. So, after learning the ingredients, Dick goes into an abandoned factory and creates the "Powerpuff Girls Xtreme". However, his Powerpuffs turn out to be cheap knock-offs and some of them are disfigured, horrible, ugly mutants as well. When the girls found out what Dick's true intentions are, they confronted him insidhis lab and asks for the Chemical X back. But Dick deliberately swallows it and transforms into a monster. As a monster, Dick's size is increased a hundredfold, his skin turns green, spikes grow out of his shoulders, blue tentacles burst out of his chest, his ponytail turns into a tentacle, his normal glasses are gone, his eyes turn black (while acting similar to normal sunglasses), and the only bit of his clothing left are the remains of his pants. In this form, he easily defeated the girls as Utonium goes into the lab. Dick drains nearly all the girls' Chemical X and their life force, but the other Powerpuff Girls Xtreme realized that Dick never gave them love and care. So, in their anger, they sacrificed themselves to destroy him, and Utonium gets the girls out in the nick of time as the factory explodes, killing Dick in the process. As Dick dies before the factory is completely destroyed, Utonium bursts into tears at the loss of the girls, but his fatherly love revives them! Delighted to see them alive again, he says "Old Dick may have gotten the formula right, but the only ingredient he forgot was LOVE. Let's go home girls." Then Dick screams "NO!" one final time as he is ambushed in his factory one millisecond before he dies, and the factory is destroyed. Personality Dick Hardly lived by pretending to care about people to get what he wanted. He always got Professor Utonium to do his college work for him, while he would go hang out with people, and get women. Although the Professor always saw him as a friend, Dick exploited him so that he didn't have to get anything done by himself. After many years, Dick called up Professor Utonium to once again take credit for doing everything for him. Dick also did the same thing to the Powerpuff Girls. He pretended to be nice to them, just so he could gain a sample of Chemical X and create the Powerpuffs Girls Xtreme. Dick made it appear like he wanted to create them to help the world. However, inside of the evil factory, he was shown being a completely different person: An evil, cruel, tyrannic, slavedriving, vicious sadist who only wanted money and had no remorse for cheating people. Despite appearing only once in the 1998 series and never in the various spin-offs or the 2016 series, Dick Hardly is among the franchise's most memorable villains. This is because he's the only member of the PPG Rogues Gallery who has absolutely no redeeming or comedic qualities. Most villains have lines they will not cross, but Dick is ruthless enough to kill anyone in order to achieve his goals, even his own ex-friends. In fact, he actually manages to make HIM (who is nastier than Mojo Jojo) look like a saint in comparison. Trivia *He was one of the few characters to die, the others being Bunny, the Gnome, and The Rowdyruff Boys (although the Boys were later revived by HIM). *As a human, Dick Hardly strongly resembles Dexter's Dad from Dexter's Laboratory. They have the same voice actor as well. *He appears similar to Kip Snip, a villain from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends also made by Craig McCracken''.'' *His name is likely a reference to his unkind nature, as "Dick" is often used as a profane insult to describe unlikable people, particularly males * It's possible that Dick was partially inspired by the Spider-Man supervillain Jackal, due to both characters creating duplicates or clones of their respective enemies. * Dick Hardly cameos in the Villainous short "The Lost Cases of Boxmore". Category:Deceased Characters Category:Villains Category:One-Time Characters Category:The Powerpuff Girls (1998) characters Category:Characters voiced by Jeff Bennett Category:Male Characters Category:Males Category:Male Villains Category:Foes unmatched by the PPG